There is also the possibility that they want to make Wagner weaker and that Prigozhin is not really wrong.
Ukraine
- Thread starter Silvanus
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''That's a nice country you have there, Georgia. It be a shame if your rejection of your authoritarian strongman means Russia has to come...liberate you'''
The father — to jail, his daughter — orphanage
Независимый правозащитный медиапроект ОВД-Инфо
en.ovdinfo.org
A 12-year-old Russian girl drew a picture of the Russian and Ukrainian flags together, next to "no to war" and some missiles. She also made some anti-war comments on social media.
She was taken from school and sent to an orphanage; her father was jailed, beaten, fined ~400 dollars, had savings of >4,800 dollars stolen; their house was ransacked.
They're back together now-- he was able to pick her up from the orphanage after his eventual release.
They should both have been sent to the front lines to fight for Putin'sThe father — to jail, his daughter — orphanage
Независимый правозащитный медиапроект ОВД-Инфо
A 12-year-old Russian girl drew a picture of the Russian and Ukrainian flags together, next to "no to war" and some missiles. She also made some anti-war comments on social media.
She was taken from school and sent to an orphanage; her father was jailed, beaten, fined ~400 dollars, had savings of >4,800 dollars stolen; their house was ransacked.
They're back together now-- he was able to pick her up from the orphanage after his eventual release.
You know, if I was a Russian convict that was being used as cannon fodder... I probably switch to the side that's not dying as quickly
Doesn't always work. There are instances of those convicts falling back into Russian hands after prisoner exchanges, and then getting tortured and executed by Wagner.
Absent
And twice is the only way to live.
- Jan 25, 2023
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I often think of what it was like to live through WW2 with the uncertainty of the war's outcome. It's difficult to imagine, to make a total emotional abstraction of our hindsight. For this alone, we're so lucky to be after.
I have no idea what the "after" of this invasion will be like. If russia loses, I envy those who will be contemplating this horror with this implicit background relief. Including our own future selves.
The anxiety is draining, and it's "merely" a local injustice. I wonder how I would have coped with Hitler's world-scale victories, at the beginning. With all the triumphant dipshits who rooted for him, in France, Switzerland, everywhere. Heck, Zweig gave up to despair even as people were convinced of Hitler's imminent demise.
We've been living in relatively uneventful times, geopolitically. Most of the wars we were aware of were from history, more tragic than stressful. I so wish I could flip some pages ahead for a peek.
I have no idea what the "after" of this invasion will be like. If russia loses, I envy those who will be contemplating this horror with this implicit background relief. Including our own future selves.
The anxiety is draining, and it's "merely" a local injustice. I wonder how I would have coped with Hitler's world-scale victories, at the beginning. With all the triumphant dipshits who rooted for him, in France, Switzerland, everywhere. Heck, Zweig gave up to despair even as people were convinced of Hitler's imminent demise.
We've been living in relatively uneventful times, geopolitically. Most of the wars we were aware of were from history, more tragic than stressful. I so wish I could flip some pages ahead for a peek.
Prigozhin is speaking some truth but probably only out of spite againest Putin not treating him like the favored child anymore. If daddy were giving him everything he asked for I'm sure his tune would be different.
For me, the most heartbreaking thing right now is reading the (increasingly rare) posts from my friends in Russia. Facebook is still banned in Russia, by the way.
For them, it's not really an uncertainty. However things end up going, they're living in a country facing severe economic hardship and where the political situation is only going to deteriorate from the already shitty state it was already in. Russians were pretty prone to doomerism already, but it sounds like an actual culture of hopelessness, where noone even imagines that anything could possibly get better because there isn't any way out for them. Whoever wins, they lose.
Undeniably, the situation in Ukraine is worse, but people there seem to have a degree of hope and solidarity. The Russians I know certainly don't, and I doubt even the vatniks have anything equivalent.
Russia has reportedly taken the eastern half of Bakhmut, up to the Bakhmutka river that runs down the middle of the city. Ukrainian army has snipers positioned on the western side of the river, making crossing the river extraordinarily difficult, and the Russian casualty rate is sky high as they attempt it.
Of course, pinch of salt there-- the ISW is a bunch of war-hawks funded by US defence contractors. Not exactly unbiased or dispassionate observers.
The Institute for the Study of War believes this is the case-- that the Russian Ministry of Defence is using the battle's high rate of attrition to deplete Wagner and derail Prigozhin's political ambitions after he denounced Gerasimov and Shoigu over the last few weeks.
Of course, pinch of salt there-- the ISW is a bunch of war-hawks funded by US defence contractors. Not exactly unbiased or dispassionate observers.
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From my general experience, I would absolutely bet that the Russian Defence Ministry wants to see Wagner take a hammering. The Russian military has suffered a long series of humiliations in Ukraine, and the last thing the Defence Ministry wants is a jumped-up hot dog salesman succeeding and throwing it in their faces.
One of the most interesting things brought up is that despite being in a very expensive war and having the GDP of Italy, Russia is apparently not spending significantly more on it's military compared to last year, which makes you wonder how Russia plans to keep all of this going(Hell, that missile strike a week or so ago cost Russia half a billion dollars by itself) Aside from the oldie of "throw dudes at the enemy" or more specifically "Throw thousands of your young men at the Ukrainians".
Demographic collapse is future Russia's problem.
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How much can Russia build whilst under sanctions? Certainly in terms of new and expensive equipment, it's possible it's lacking materials to build very much, in which case it has little to usefully spend much more on. It's equipping and re-equipping its army with old stocks, so this might mean it's paying for the war by dropping its R&D and high-end procurement budgets.
I'd also ask, how much can Russia build in a timely fashion? Peacetime procurement is often a very long and involved process, unless Russia has a lot of factories sitting round idly (or making something else with the tooling sitting round idly, or can quickly be adapted), it'd be difficult to make complicated weapon systems all of a sudden.
Small arms, maybe, but the sophisticated stuff you really need nowdays is another issue.
If we look at MBTs as an example of such weapons systems that the USSR used to be well-known for producing in both quality and quantity, the answer seems to be little to none. The much-hyped T-14 is still largely hypothetical (with the current test models being very expensive paper-weights combat-wise) and the T-90 has, for all intents and purposes, disappeared from the war's front with no sign of replacements anytime soon.
Not to mention Russia has a problem with Brain drain to boot. Like a million younger Russians fled to avoid being moblized IIRC and thousands more are being sent to the Donbass to be slaughtered. I doubt Russia has such as excess of people it can both grind down it's conscripts and have the ability to staff up new munitions factories in the next few years.
Time to start finding more reasons to arrest citizens!
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Russian soldier Daniil Frolkin murdered Ukrainian civilian Ruslan Yaremchuk in Andriivka early in the war. He confessed in August last year:
"I tell him, get down on your knees, and I just put a bullet through his forehead. I confess [...] to shooting civilians, stealing from civilians, taking their phones".
Now he has been sentenced by a military court in Russia to 5 1/2 years in prison. But... not for murder or theft. For spreading "fake news" when he said he did it.
www.theguardian.com
"I tell him, get down on your knees, and I just put a bullet through his forehead. I confess [...] to shooting civilians, stealing from civilians, taking their phones".
Now he has been sentenced by a military court in Russia to 5 1/2 years in prison. But... not for murder or theft. For spreading "fake news" when he said he did it.
Russia gives suspended sentence to soldier who admitted killing Ukrainian civilian
Daniil Frolkin’s sentence on charges of spreading ‘fake news’ seen as attempt to silence other service personnel
www.theguardian.com